Making A Difference : One College’s Approach: Recruit and Retain Minority Students

Latino and African-American participation in higher education is comparatively low. Nationally, fewer than 10% of bachelor’s degree and only 5% of doctoral degrees are awarded to these groups, but the Doheny Campus of Mount St. Mary’s College, celebrating its 30th anniversary, successfully serves a student population that is 90% minority and often academically under-prepared. Nearly 70% of the students who enter its Alternative Access Program receive an associate degree in two years; of that group, a majority earn baccalaureate degrees after transferring to four-year colleges and universities.

Ethnic Distribution Mt. St. Mary’s College Alternative Access/ Mt. St. Mary’s undergraduate, and Los Angeles County population

Black Hispanic Asian Anglo Other Source: Mount St. Mary’s College, U.S. Census Bureau

One Student’s Experience

“I graduated from Southgate High School with a 2.1 grade point and didn’t really think of going to college” says Diana Gonzalez, 21, a senior at Mt. St. Mary’s College. “I was already working at a fast-food outlet. I could have worked there full-time.”

Gonzalez entered Alternative Access after a counselor told her about the program. She liked that she could live on campus, that there was a teacher for every seven students. “It seemed made for a student who wants to go to school but doesn’t quite know how.”

The first in her family to attend college, Gonzalez received her associate degree in 1991 with a grade point average of 3.4 and transferred to the baccalaureate program at the college’s campus on the Westside. After she graduates with a B.A. in psychology later this year, she expects to continue her job as a counselor at an adolescent drug rehabilitation center. “I have a lot of hopes for myself. I want to go to graduate school and be a director of a rehab community.”

“I see Mt. St. Mary’s as my life-saver. I’ll never forget that I came from here.

HOW IT WORKS

Alternative Access is designed to help each student to develop habits and attitudes that lead to academic success, to overcome barriers to that success and to use cultural diversity as a catalyst for learning.

Testing and Assessment: “Unless students have the (academic) building blocks they won’t be successful,” explains Sister Kathleen Kelly, vice president of the Doheny campus. “We test students for competencies in reading, writing, arithmetic and study skills like note-taking. An intensive summer program (is) designed to help students to catch up.

“If they have not reached competency, then students are required to take developmental courses. Our philosophy is to help them to achieve the competency they need, not to punish them for not having it. We explain to the students that this is about their success.”

Student tracking: “We have a process we call STEP: Strides Toward Educational Proficiency. Within a month after classes begin, if faculty perceive any problems at all--absenteeism, lack of preparation--they fill out a STEP notice that is given to the student and the opportunity for the faculty to talk with student is encouraged. If we find a pattern, that a student has received more than two or three notices, the adviser calls the student in and talks to her to see if there’s any difficulty. At mid-semester the process is repeated. In many traditional colleges the only way of assessing the students is by mid-terms and finals. What we really encourage is more feedback, more assignments, so that the student is aware of her progress.”

Multicultural Curriculum and Environment: “We’ve worked to make courses more reflective of multicultural concepts. ... For example, instead of teaching French Impressionist art, an instructor might teach the influences on French Impressionist art from Japan and from Africa so that more cultures are brought (to bear) on the subject. One of the important things that students say is that they can see themselves in the course.

There’s an emphasis on students learning from each other about cultures, (learning) from each other’s culture because they interact in a (diverse) environment.

Required Community Service: “Along with required community service students meet in seminars to examine societal issues. They choose a volunteer service that is connected with the societal issues discussed. If we just put out a request for volunteer service, many of these students (because of their social or economic background) would say to themselves, well, I don’t have anything to give, what am I going to give? The idea of the volunteer service is to give them the experience that what they have to give is tremendous. It then helps them in terms of their own self-esteem that other people have greater needs than they do and they have something to offer society.”

Financial Support and Flexibility: “We really try to help our students plan financially, and we understand what their difficulties are. We do what we can for them with the financial situation. (Some) students don’t have a lot of extra time for extracurricular activities. We’ve tried to build into our work-study some of the qualities and learning experience to teach them responsibility and leadership.”

Gonzalez adds, “I remember one semester I didn’t have any money for room and board. I knew I could pay it, but not at the time they set up for every other student. I went to the financial aid office, and they sent me to the business office and what I thought I saw was this real rigid man who wasn’t going to bend, but he let me extend my payments into the next semester.